Cross-party Brexit group launches

A campaign to force Britain out of the EU has been launched with support from the political and business worlds and some serious financial muscle.

Vote Leave has secured the backing of Peter Cruddas, a banker and former treasurer of the Conservative Party; John Mills, the biggest donor to the Labour Party; and Stuart Wheeler, a former treasurer for the United Kingdom Independence Party. It also drew support from Labour and Conservative members of parliament and the groups Business for Britain, Labour Leave and Conservatives for Britain

Prime Minister David Cameron has promised to hold an In/Out referendum on the U.K.’s membership of the EU by the end of 2017.

The new campaign group said it will make the case for Britain to leave the EU amid concerns that Cameron will fail to win back significant powers. It says that if Britain votes to leave the EU, it can develop a “new friendly relationship” with the Union based on free trade deals.

“We must end the supremacy of EU law over U.K. law,” said Kate Hoey, an MP and co-chair of Labour Leave, in a statement announcing the launch of the campaign. “If we vote to leave, then the £350m we send to Brussels every week can be spent on our priorities like the NHS.”

British Euroskeptics are split on how to run the Out campaign. Vote Leave will be in competition to be the official Out campaign group with Leave.eu, which has the official backing of UKIP. However, Nigel Farage, leader of UKIP and an MEP, took to Twitter to announce his support for Vote Leave, saying “making the business argument for leaving the EU is important if we are to win the referendum.”

Cameron will hold talks later Friday with German Chancellor Angela Merkel in a bid to secure support for his EU reform agenda. He told the Conservative conference Wednesday that the EU was “too big, too bossy, too interfering.”

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Louis Vis

Whilst the EU is not perfect, Eurosceptics are wrong in thinking that we would be better off without it. The economic and political damage caused by Brexit would be tremendous for both the UK and the EU as a whole (https://youngeuropeansnetwork.wordpress.com/2015/08/19/political-damage-of-the-brexit-referendum/). It is far better to fight for reforms from the inside than fight it from the outside. Furthermore, both Angela Merkel (Germany) and Emmanuel Macron (France) have supported the idea of creating a new treaty/reforming past one over next few years. Therefore leaving in 2016/2017 would prevent us from this opportunity.

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